Hi all; Ptnewell posts again! The Physics professor who last year said that PC2100 wouldn't work is still holding RMBS at a massive loss, and still is in denial about RDRAM. Here's his latest post, from the Yahoo copy:
Tired of Tom?
ptnewell, Yahoo RMBS thread #319426, July 31, 2001
Most of the time spent discussing benchmarks on message boards comes from the work of strongly anti-Rambus fan sites such as Tom’s Hardware or Anand. Of course these non-professionals with little training and strong antipathies are hardly the most reliable source. Interested in a better way to compare, free of vitriol?
Check out the SPEC website (a non-profit industry group):
spec.org
Compared to the slick glossy layouts and the entertaining tirades of the fan sites, this industry benchmark site is boring: It just lays out the cold hard numbers. But if you want some honest comparisons, check it out. Unlike the tests at Anand’s, none are determined by the graphics card installed.
Examples:
AMD 1.4 GHz Athlon on the Gigabyte 7ADX motherboard, 266 MHz DDR (PC2100)
Versus 1.7 GHz P4-Xeon with PC800 RDRAM (single processor)
...
CINT2000 (Higher is better)
1.4 GHz AMD/DDR: 495
1.7 GHz P4/RDRAM: 575 (21% faster)
CFP2000 (Higher is better):
1.4 GHz AMD/DDR: 426
1.7 GHz P4/RDRAM: 593 (39% faster)
It goes on and on. It will never replace the fan sites, and it is boring as heck, but it sure paints a very different picture than what you will read when visiting the AMD-pandering amatuers. Incidentally I learned about this site last year when I asked how some RDRAM skeptics at work intended up buying an RDRAM workstation (at that time, i840 based Dell). The answer was that they used this site to find the cheapest price/performance ratio (literally calculating the ratio). RDRAM has been the winner for some time, especially if you buy from Dell using a corporate discount.
I’m quite confident that the i845 will have a HIGHER price/performance ratio than the i850. It’s obvious why RDRAM keeps increasing its market share by 80% per quarter. DDR and SDRAM systems just cost too much.
messages.yahoo.com
What he's doing here is comparing a Xeon workstation to a cheap AMD DDR machine. As he has done before, this is an apples to oranges comparison.
Here's a site that happens to sell both Xeon workstations and AMD DDR computers. Let's take a look at pricing.
1.4GHz AMD Athlon T-Bird with 128MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM: $1,138.00
1.4GHz AMD Athlon T-Bird with 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM: $1,235.00
xicomputer.com
1.7GHz Intel Xeon with 128MB PC800 RDRAM: $2,264.00 + 99%
1.7GHz Intel Xeon with 512MB PC800 RDRAM: $2,518.00 +104%
xicomputer.com
(all other options left at default)
xicomputer.com
In other words, the RDRAM machines are 99~104% higher price than the DDR machines, but they only give 21~39% more performance. Now go back and read PtNewell's statement again: "The answer was that they used this site to find the cheapest price/performance ratio (literally calculating the ratio). RDRAM has been the winner for some time, especially if you buy from Dell using a corporate discount." Looks like PtNewell forgot to compute the ratio. That's the kind of mistake you wouldn't expect a physics professor to make. Unless, maybe, he's got a bit of Ramblindness.
-- Carl
P.S. How did I find the above site? Did I use my team of savvy computer experts, well paid with TeamDDR basher money? No, I did a google for "Xeon AMD RDRAM DDR SDRAM price workstation" LOL!!! |
